Denied to all but Ghosts

by Pete Heathmoor

  He smiled sweetly at her, as much in an act of self-moderation as appeasement. He had to fight hard to suppress the bullying side of his character, too many years in Fleet Street was his justification for his aggression. He had managed to shield Emily from it thus far, the only time it had emerged was during their love making when it deceitfully masqueraded itself as zeal. He must continue to work hard to control it; they still had some way to go to achieving their goal.

  CHAPTER 16. A MUCH BETTER DAY THAN YESTERDAY.

  The ringing telephone summoned Beckett back to the waking world. For a moment he felt disorientated but quickly remembered why he was lying in a delicious hotel bed. He smiled as he remembered the previous evening but the strident demands of the telephone could not be ignored.

  “Hullo?” said Beckett warily.

  “Good morning, Thomas, it’s seven thirty, I’ll see you for breakfast at eight.” With that, Cavendish hung up.

  Beckett may well have been drunk the previous evening but he was a seasoned drinker, allowing his body ample time to detox overnight and to a casual observer he would have appeared in fine fettle. The powerful shower blew away the cobwebs and by the time he reached the breakfast area he was more than ready for a full cooked breakfast. He arrived at ten past eight and knew he should not have been surprised to find Cavendish already residing at the table wearing the same white shirt, without the jacket, as he had worn the previous evening.

  “I ordered you tea, Thomas, hope that’s okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, thanks.”

  “Did you enjoy our evening?” asked Cavendish.

  “Aren’t you suppose to say first ‘did you sleep well last night’?” replied Beckett.

  “Oh, I’m sure you did, Thomas, I’m sure you did. A very successful evening I thought. What did you think of Dr Spelman?”

  “I thought she was very pleasant,” answered Beckett as he poured his tea.

  “I can hardly write ‘she was very pleasant’ in my report, can I?” said Cavendish critically.

  “You write a report?”

  “Of course I file a report; you don’t think we enjoy all this fine living for nothing do you?”

  “Suppose not,” said Beckett ignoring Cavendish’s sarcasm.

  “Despite what you may have thought of the evening,” continued Cavendish, “may I say that you played your part wonderfully, I thought it could not have gone better. We now know what Dr Spelman is after, we know she is not working alone and I believe she has no idea about the firm. I think that qualifies as a successful evening. We must now step the operation up a gear.”

  “Where were you last night, when I got back from walking Emily home you were nowhere to be found?”

  “I followed you both back to her hotel?”

  “You did what?” asked a stunned Beckett.

  “You heard perfectly well what I said. I followed you back to the hotel and sat in the bar.”

  “Well I didn’t see you!”

  “You were not supposed to see me.”

  “What did you do, wear a wig and a false moustache?”

  “It’s the simplest thing in the world to remain unobserved, Thomas.”

  “Rubbish, that simply isn’t true, and you know it.”

  “Did you just see that couple sit down at the table over there?” asked Cavendish, pointing to a single man breakfasting alone behind Beckett.

  “What couple?” queried Beckett whilst peering over his shoulder.

  “Exactly,” said Cavendish evenly.

  “But I wasn’t looking!”

  “Precisely.”

  “Hold on a minute, you’re saying it’s easy to go unnoticed, so I could walk into a bank, take all the money and no one would notice?”

  “Not the same thing at all and you know it. If you had been looking out for me last night then you might possibly have seen me. But you were not and you did not.”

  The conversation died as Cavendish played with his mobile, as he frequently did. Beckett had no idea who he was communicating with, and to be honest, he did not want to know.

  “I’m just popping out to make a call, Thomas, you enjoy your breakfast.”

  Beckett ate his breakfast alone, he fancied that his appetite would have been keener had Cavendish been present. Cavendish returned as Beckett was starting on his toast and sat down silently, buttered some bread and took the bacon from his plate and made a hasty sandwich.

  “Is that all you’re going to eat?” asked Beckett.

  “It’s sufficient, Thomas. I have little appetite when I’m working.”

  “It’s no wonder you’re so bloody thin!” commented Beckett caustically.

  As if on cue, Cavendish’s phone rang. His phone identified the caller as ringing from a Bristol Hotel room.

  “Ah, good morning, Dr Spelman, you slept well I trust?” Beckett glanced up keenly from his plate in anticipation but Cavendish stared off into the distance, divorcing Beckett from the conversation.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, perhaps you will be feeling better tomorrow. Shall I call round to your hotel in the morning, perhaps we could talk after breakfast?” Cavendish remained motionless as he listened to her reply. “Very good, Dr Spelman, I’ll call you tomorrow. I hope you are feeling better soon, goodbye.” Cavendish terminated the call and finally smiled derisively across to Beckett.

  “It would seem that the lovely Emily is under the weather this morning, Thomas, seems that something she ate yesterday did not agree with her.” Cavendish scoffed as he finished imparting the information to his colleague.

  “That’s hardly very charitable is it?” replied Beckett.

  “Judging by the amount of wine and brandy you two consumed last night and what she must have been up to afterwards, I’m surprised that she is even awake yet. Although having said that, she probably is still in bed.”

  “What do you mean ‘what she must have been up to afterwards’?” enquired a curious Beckett.

  “What are your plans for today, Thomas?”

  “I haven’t got any plans. My plan was dinner last night, today wasn’t in the reckoning.”

  “Excellent, then you must call your wife and tell her that you will be home later. You and I are going to do some surveillance work.”

  An hour or so later Cavendish and Beckett were drinking morning coffee in the lounge bar at Dr Spelman’s hotel, watching the guests checking in and out.

  “So are you going to tell me who we are supposed to be watching?” challenged Beckett in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “There is no need to whisper, Thomas, just talk softly and normally, and don’t suddenly jump up and point.”

  “That’s not going to be a problem if I don’t know who I’m supposed to be bloody pointing at,” announced Beckett sulkily. Cavendish extracted his phone from his bottomless inside coat pocket and pressed a few buttons to summon up a photo before passing it over to Beckett.

  “It’s a poor profile shot I’m afraid, it was the best I could do under the circumstances.”

  “Dodgy looking git,” commented Beckett, “he looks vaguely familiar, who is he?”

  “I don’t know. The photo was not good enough to run through the database. All I know is that he was the man who spent the night with Dr Spelman and that his name is Paul.”

  “You what?” replied a stunned Beckett, preposterously disappointed that Emily had not slept alone. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty much, he greeted her last night after your poignant au revoir.” Beckett felt an absurd pang of envy and was pleased when a question not involving Emily Spelman popped into his head.

  “How long do we sit here, won’t we look a little suspicious just sat here drinking coffee?”

  “Thomas, that is what people do in hotels, they sit around and drink coffee. However, I have a feeling that our man is a smoker, let’s hope he needs a nicotine fix soon.”

  They had only to wait another fifteen minutes before the striking figure of Paul Slingsby walked into the lobby from
the lift and left the hotel by the main entrance.

  “Shit!” cried Beckett, attracting the attention of the hotel guests around him, “I know the bastard!”

  “What?” insisted Cavendish, the inflection of his concern clearly perceptible.

  “He’s a bloody journo from London,” said Beckett, still too loudly for Cavendish’s comfort.

  “Then I suggest you make a hasty visit to the cloakroom and await my summons.” Beckett self-consciously sloped off to the men’s toilet. Undercover work, he concluded, was definitely not his forte.

  Cavendish waited for Beckett to disappear before walking to the front entrance of the hotel. The journalist looked a good deal smarter than the last time Cavendish had seen him. He grudgingly conceded he looked very handsome.

  The man named Paul wore clean jeans, blue tee shirt and a plain grey jacket. He had obviously showered, as his shoulder length dark hair still appeared to be damp. Cavendish took a cigarette from the packet in his coat pocket and fumbled around for a light. The journalist glanced his way but returned his gaze to the events of the hotel’s arrivals and departures, habitually scanning for some illusive story.

  Cavendish put the cigarette in his mouth and waited for the journalist to turn his attention back to him, as he knew he would. When eye contact was established, Cavendish made a beseeching smile to the journalist, the cigarette dangling forlornly from his lips. The man nodded knowingly without speaking, took a lighter from his pocket, and lit Cavendish’s cigarette.

  “My thanks,” said Cavendish after taking a long lazy draw on the cigarette, “a much better day than yesterday, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” replied the journalist absently, “visiting the country?”

  “No, just a business trip” replied Cavendish.

  “Sorry,” smiled the journalist, for the first time taking an interest in the stranger, “I thought you were a tourist, you know, the accent and all that.”

  “I’m not German,” said Cavendish accusingly.

  “I didn’t say you were, my friend, no offence.”

  “None taken,” replied Cavendish. The man stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Have a nice day,” said the journalist by way of a parting gesture. Even though they had never met, Slingsby was certain that the man who had unofficially introduced himself was the man Emily described as the intimidating German with whom she had dined. His honed instincts told him that procuring the sword was not going to be as simple as Emily innocently believed.

  The Untersucher smirked as he watched the man walk back into the hotel to rejoin his beautiful accomplice. Cavendish returned to collect a grateful Beckett from the toilet.

  “Hell, Marchel,” complained the photographer, “you can get locked up in this country for loitering around the gents.”

  They left the hotel, and walked up to the top of Corn Street, which, Beckett informed Cavendish, was the heart of the old city.

  “I remember who the journo is, his name is Paul Slingsby, a freelance, I met him at a photo shoot once,” informed Beckett. “A photo shoot of what?” asked Cavendish inquisitively.

  “Oh, I can’t remember,” Beckett said evasively, “I thought you’d be more interested in Slingsby than my photo shoots.”

  “Sorry to steal your thunder, Thomas, tell me your story.”

  “He’s an investigative journalist; he’s always interested in cases of injustice and corruption. I’m sure he would love to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, well, Woodward or Bernstein, so it’s interesting that he’s latched on to Dr Spelman in this particular instance, maybe he’s the one who has tipped her off and knows all about the auction?”

  “An interesting supposition,” commented Cavendish. “Do you think he would recognise you?”

  “Probably not, Marsh. Journos never generally recognise photographers; we’re at the bottom of the food chain.”

  Beckett watched Cavendish lapse deep into thought as they walked in silence towards Bristol Bridge. The German did not like dealing with the likes of Slingsby, who possessed the ability to penetrate Cavendish’s deceptions.

  The sun broke through the cloud fleetingly as they stopped on the bridge, leaned on the balustrade, and watched the swans glide gracefully beneath the span.

  “Still,” Cavendish announced as he emerged from his reverie, as if assuming Beckett had been privy to his private deliberations. “Nothing has intrinsically changed. We follow the plan as it has been laid out.”

  “And what plan is that?” asked Beckett.

  “You go home, Thomas. I’ll contact you in a few days. Be prepared for a trip away for a week or so I’d guess. If you have any problems with Mrs Beckett give me a call and I’ll have a word in her ear.” Beckett considered Cavendish’s directive. He and Sue may have had their downs and then some more downs, but he was not sure that she deserved the ‘word in her ear’ treatment.

  “You always thought that Emily had been tipped off though, didn’t you?” stated Beckett after a reflective pause.

  “Yes, I thought she had been tipped off by someone inside the firm. What I had not considered was that she had an accomplice. Is Spelman the heretic’s point of contact or is your Mr Slingsby. Is Slingsby taking advantage of Dr Spelman in more ways than one? How innocent is Dr Spelman?”

  “To be fair,” defended Beckett, “she hasn’t exactly done anything wrong has she? All she believes is that some dodgy deal with an old sword is being done.”

  “In my world, Thomas, the bad guys aren’t necessarily bad in the eyes of your world, yet they are bad in the eyes of my Inquisitorial Rules. The intriguing thing is, that as far as I am aware, there is no sword up for sale.”

  “So what’s the point of telling her that there is?” asked Beckett, turning his head to face the angular profile of the inquisitor.

  “You will see, Thomas, all in good time,” grimaced Cavendish as he dwelt upon the diminishing odds of pulling off the infamous Didier ruse.

  CHAPTER 17. ARTISTRY REMEMBERED IN THE COTSWOLDS.

  Saturday morning was and always had been a day for optimism according to Thomas Beckett. Nobody could get you on Saturday morning was his false philosophy, you could always put off anything of consequence until Monday.

  He sat on the back door step looking out onto his garden whilst his two youngest children, Daniel and Antony, watched TV in the front room. Fifteen-year-old Sarah was still in bed as was his wife, Sue, who had worked a late shift the previous evening. He had done little the previous day save for the necessary domestic chores and mulling over the events of earlier in the week and the way that Marchel Cavendish now dominated his life.

  Many would question the blind dogged role he assumed when with Cavendish and would question why he had remained with him after the fright of the Simeon incident. He only had one motive, to secure enough cash to allay Sarah’s fears about going to university. To that end, he was resolved to endure what he must and ask no questions.

  He was realistic enough to know that his input was negligible, save perhaps as a taxi service, but he equally realised that Cavendish was hardly the sort of man to carry around any loose baggage. Whatever his assigned role was, it obviously suited Marchel Cavendish.

  The aquilegia were coming into flower and the white blossom on the pear tree was in full bloom, it was, even to a gardening moron such as himself, a wonderful time of year. He had drifted off into thoughts of shopping in the afternoon when he heard his mobile ring. There was no thrill at the thought of a photo assignment; instead, there was the anticipated excitement of the prospect of Cavendish making contact.

  “Good morning, Thomas. Hope I find you well this beautiful morning?” asked Marchel Cavendish.

  “Yes, thank you, Marsh.”

  “Excellent. Not far from you there is a car hire company on Hartcliffe Way, do you know it?”

  “Sure, I know it.”

  “Excellent. I have arranged for you to pick up a Ford Galaxy. It should be available at ten thirty.
It’s booked in your name and is paid for; all you will need is your driving licence. I would like you to pick me up at four o’clock from my hotel. Is that all clear?”

  “Bit short notice isn’t it?”

  “Sorry, but events generate a momentum of their own.” Cavendish hung up.

  The Fates, or Cavendish, now dictated the pace of Thomas Beckett’s life. He collected the Galaxy and parked it on the road at front of his house. Daniel and Antony became extremely excited at the presence of a new car, so too the teenage Sarah, who stood next to it for far longer than was necessary in the hope that her text messages were not in vain and that some of her friends would see the new car parked in the street. Even Sue Beckett was not immune to the potency of the new vehicle and was more than happy when the whole family went shopping together. It had required 'the word in the ear' from Cavendish to allay Sue Beckett's misgivings about her husband going away for an indeterminate length of time.

  Whatever Cavendish had said certainly did the trick, for throughout the remainder of that short day Sue Beckett pampered and spoke to her husband in a way reminiscent of their courtship. Beckett felt as if he was on a one-way suicide mission into oblivion. He could suddenly empathise with the Kamikaze pilots. Perhaps that was why his wife was so happy.

  Come three thirty, after a late lunch and his suitcase neatly packed by his wife, Beckett was given a grand send off by his whole family, even a few of the neighbours waved as he drove away, carried along with the emotional display of his family. Sue’s delight at the prospect of his absence ad infinitum was palpably manifest and he considered asking Cavendish what he had said that was so agreeable to her. Yet he already knew the answer he would get- none.

  Cavendish was standing outside the hotel wearing his omnipresent woollen coat and sunglasses, which the weather certainly did not call for. The Galaxy pulled over to the side of the road and the grinning driver stepped out to greet Cavendish.

  “What’s wrong with you, Thomas, only ten minutes late, you must be in a hurry?”